#website issue fixing service

[kidd-commander]

Is it just me, or has your website been struggling the last few days?

I've noticed that too actually, I've been digging through the archive while putting the book together and it's been CHUGGING. Our internet's been rough lately too so I assumed it was because of that, but if it's happening for other people I'm not sure there's a lot I can do about it right now unfortunately. Sorry friend :/

[8techlabs-blog]

How to Balance Fixing Performance Issues and Adding New Features in Web Applications?

In today’s digital landscape, web applications are essential for business operations, marketing, and consumer involvement. As organizations expand and consumer expectations rise, development teams are frequently confronted with the difficult task of balancing two key priorities: addressing performance issues and introducing new features.

While boosting performance improves the user experience and increases efficiency, new features are required to remain competitive and meet market demands. Prioritizing one over the other, on the other hand, might have negative consequences—performance concerns can lead to a poor user experience while failing to innovate can result in a competitive disadvantage.

This blog delves into how to balance improving performance and introducing new features to web apps, allowing firms to satisfy technical and market demands efficiently.

Why Balancing Performance and New Features Is Crucial

A web application‘s success depends on both its performance and its features. However, relying entirely on one might result in imbalances that impair both user happiness and business progress. 

Performance:Performance is an important component that directly influences user retention and happiness. Users can become frustrated and leave if the application has slow loading times, crashes, or problems. Ensuring that your web application runs smoothly is essential since 53% of mobile consumers would quit a site that takes more than three seconds to load. 

New Features:On the other hand, constantly adding new features keeps users interested and promotes your company as innovative. New features generate growth by attracting new consumers and retaining existing ones who want to experience the most recent changes.

The dilemma is deciding when to prioritize bug fixes over new feature development. A poor balance can harm both performance and innovation, resulting in a subpar user experience and stagnation. 

Common Performance Issues in Web Applications

Before balancing performance and features, it’s important to understand the common performance issues that web applications face:

Slow Load Times: Slow pages lead to higher bounce rates and lost revenue.

Server Downtime: Frequent server outages impact accessibility and trust.

Poor Mobile Optimization: A significant portion of web traffic comes from mobile devices and apps that aren’t optimized for mobile fail to reach their potential.

Security Vulnerabilities: Data breaches and security flaws harm credibility and user trust.

Bugs and Glitches: Software bugs lead to poor user experiences, especially if they cause the app to crash or become unresponsive.

Strategic Approaches to Fixing Performance Issues

When performance issues develop, they must be handled immediately to guarantee that the online application functions properly. Here are techniques for improving performance without delaying new feature development: 

Prioritize Critical Issues:Tackle performance issues that have the most significant impact first, such as slow loading times or security vulnerabilities. Use analytics to identify bottlenecks and determine which areas require urgent attention. 

Use a Continuous Improvement Process:Continuously monitor and optimize the application’s performance. With tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, you can track performance metrics and make incremental improvements without major overhauls. 

Optimize Database Queries:Slow database queries are one of the leading causes of web app performance issues. Optimize queries and ensure that the database is indexed properly for faster access and retrieval of data. 

Reduce HTTP Requests:The more requests a page makes to the server, the slower it loads. Minimize requests by reducing file sizes, combining CSS and JavaScript files, and utilizing caching.

  5. Leverage Caching and CDNs:       Use caching strategies and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to deliver content quickly to users by storing files in multiple locations globally.

Why Adding New Features is Essential for Growth

 In the rapidly changing digital environment, businesses must continually innovate to stay relevant. Adding new features is key to maintaining a competitive edge and enhancing user engagement. Here’s why:

User Expectations:Today’s consumers expect personalized experiences and constant innovation. Failure to add new features can lead to customer churn, as users may feel your web application no longer meets their needs.

Market Differentiation:Introducing new features allows your application to stand out in the marketplace. Unique functionalities can set your app apart from competitors, attracting new users and increasing customer loyalty.

Increased Revenue Opportunities:New features can lead to additional revenue streams. For example, adding premium features or new integrations can boost the app’s value and lead to increased sales or subscription rates.

  4. Feedback-Driven Innovation:       New features are often driven by user feedback. By continuously developing and adding features, you create a feedback loop that improves the overall user experience and fosters customer                 satisfaction.

Read More: https://8techlabs.com/how-to-balance-fixing-performance-issues-and-adding-new-features-in-web-applications-to-meet-market-demands-and-enhance-user-experience/

[squid-socks]

Shit that genuinely sucks and we need to stop calling “you sound like an old man” type problems. They are modern and actual issues:

AI phone operators. If they program that shit for 3 things and none of those things are what you need you just aren’t getting help.

Really hard to navigate “delete account” options with unclear outcomes. Even more so; “pause accounts” which look like “cancel account” and would confuse anyone whose tired or stressed and in a hurry. So suddenly payments come out in like a month bcs the account is unpaused??

Tiny and delayed x buttons on ads or “plus” versions of accounts🌝

Needing 10000 social media’s and apps a day accounts to have a normal running life. From socialising to work to food and savings. (I’m broke of course I have the fucking Tesco app with how they price gouge)

Everything’s an app now and all the websites suck. Why??? Idk. We’re in the bad place.

Everything comes per email and all things can be confirmed and adjusted online. This has its benefits - but having an option to say “only works in person with physical card” or something would help so many people manage all their online crap and avoid the constant threat of fraud!??

EVERYTHING NEEDS AN ACCOUNT EVERY WEBSITE EVEN GAMES YOU BUY ONLINE WANG SOME WEIRD ONLINE ACCOUNT UNRELATED TO THE GAME ITSELF???? It’s free but give us all your information that someone else will use to make certain things excessively more expensive on your phone. Which btw you can’t leave anywhere now as everything in your life HAS to be on it. And most things you need you will need to buy on it.

Always on that damn phone. Addiction. Eye problems. Back problems. Brain damage. Depression. The stupids. Anger issues. It’s a fucking problem.

Being a dick is just ok now?? Especially in the service industry. It actually is kind of a problem?? I don’t know how some of these people are genuinely still hired? Yes you can be underpaid and unnecessarily a dick. I’m not the one paying you. Nor am I the one abusing you - re-fucking-lax.

People who play music out loud in public??? I mean that’s just an asshole move???

People who work a trade related to fixing shoes and clothes are vanishing but also suck half the time???

Nowhere to walk anymore?? Nature is being swallowed up.

Food quality and flavour is in the toilet

No one mends or takes care of anything they own or buy anymore and consumerism is at a crazy high. We have no control over ourselves or the situation.

The “community” is dead. Ya know that thing that gave us the power to be informed and resolute and comforted by each others support - yeh that’s gone.

How expensive public transport has gotten. Fr tho.

Gum. No bcs actually it’s everywhere and it’s bad. We at least need more eco friendly hum or something. And some people need to learn to chew with their mouths closed!??

Having ads for plus versions of accounts or ads in general you can’t exit out of and only show “proceed” - that are a 50/50 shot; if you click that it will either THEN go to an exit ad page or automatically give you this subscription.

Having to close a whole app to get rid of an ad bcs there is no x button. And as a continuation to the previous bullet point; when you reopen the app and they insistently give you the ad each time and you STILL don’t know if it’s an automatic subscription or just to get to the “close ad” page.

Disinformation and misinformation actually being fucking believable. AI is good at deceit. Especially with rage bate and a high necessity for internet literacy (which needs to be updated basically daily). It’s easy to fall for something stupid and wrong. Even more so with genuine articles and news sources lying to your face or taking info from bad sources like tick tock. A busy person has 5min to read the news daily they can’t fact check literally everyone!??? (Also people under 30 where eating tide pods and putting their phones in microwaves so if grandma falls for a Facebook post I don’t wanna hear a single damn snicker you hypocrites 👀👀👀)

Sorry I’m gonna stop😅

[damazcuz]

Nothing quite like when you have an issue with an online order and you try to find a phone number or an email or Something to talk to a person to resolve it and you go to "contact us!" And it's like "search for your issue!" so you type "missing package" and the faq search is like "Did you mean "I love my package that I received"? Do any of these topics help? :3" and it's like no none if this is helpful or relevant, so the website is like "click here to fix an issue! Hiiii! I'm the helpful customer service bot, Tarbo! ^_^ beep boop! Which of these apply?" And so you navigate through Tarbo's maze of torture for ages trying to get it to understand that you did not receive your package even though it was marked delivered, and you've looked everywhere and waited several days and the delivery photo shows a different item from the order on your doorstep but not the one that's missing. And Tarbo is like "....... I'm not able to help with that 🥹 sowey.... but I'm just a little boy. .. and it's my birthday .... you wouldn't get mad at a little birthday boy would you? 🥺 and I'm just a teensie tiny baby... born today!..... who wears glasses.... call our 1-800 number between the hours of 2 am and 2:14 am on Monday and someone will assist you! 😊 rate your experience with Tarbo? 🥹"

[mariacallous]

And so it begins…

Tomorrow will see the inauguration of President Trump. And this time around, there’s one crucial difference. His tech bro allies will be front and centre: Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos. NBC has reported they will be on the platform. This is the image that is going to be seared into our eyeballs and that sets the tone and the expectation for the next four years.

The ascension of the tech gods to the presidential dais is a remarkable journey. Back in December 2016, I watched live on C-Span as Trump welcomed a group of tech execs into a conference room in Trump Tower. Front and centre was Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantir, who’d been one of the few people in Silicon Valley to back Trump. And at that meeting, Trump stroked his hand throughout but the rest of the execs looked nervous, unsure. Some of them such as Sheryl Sandberg had been vocal Democrat supporters. But they all said how excited they were to be there and - Bezos’s word - “super-excited about the possibilities for innovations in this space”.

I just checked to see what I wrote that Sunday. There’s a rule in journalism that if the headline is question, the answer is generally no. But eight years on, it’s now clear: the answer is yes, yes, yes.

This week Joe Biden’s last major speech sounded the alarm to a middle America which had not heard such words before. America, he said, was becoming a “tech industrial complex”.

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom."

If you’re subscribing to this newsletter none of this is going to be news to you but given reports Google searches for the word “oligarchy” spiked immediately afterwards, it is presumably to a swathe of America that’s never had to reckon with these ideas and issues before.

Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, is also among the execs who are expected to kiss the ring tomorrow. Back in 2016, it was Google that I was focussed on. Google was prompting users to search for results on whether the holocaust really happened and when they did, they were being sent straight to Stormfront, a Nazi website.

Google responded not by fixing or even acknowledging the problem, instead the head of public affairs for Europe repeatedly rang my editor and complained. Google had recently spent a lot of money with the Guardian on a sponsored virtual reality project and the head of public affairs for the company felt entitled to make his views known. Weeks of low-grade aggression culminated in a nuclear letter that landed on Christmas Eve. I dealt with in a sweat in a service station on the M4 with the Guardian’s head of legal affairs while she prepared her goose for the oven.

I often think about that story, which was the beginning of the trail that took me down the Cambridge Analytica rabbithole and what I learned from it about dealing with big tech. It was the first time I’d been threatened in this way but after the initial fear and panic - the Google exec cc-ed every senior editor on the paper - the Guardian’s managing editor was robust and reassuring: “If there’s anything that needs to be amended, we will amend it,” she said. “And then we will tell him to fuck off.”

[scam-alerts]

🚨Scammer Alert🚨 + 🔎Scam Exam(ination)🔍

Seen as: We can help you recover your <thing> Scam Type: Recovery scam

Description of this scam and how it works:

Recovery scams target people who have already fallen for a scam. The scammer may contact you, or may advertise their services online. They will usually either offer to help you recover your funds, or will tell you that your funds have already been recovered and they will help you access them. In cases where they say they will help you recover your funds, they usually call themselves either "recovery agents" or "hackers". When they tell you that your funds have already been recovered, they may impersonate a law enforcement, a government official, a lawyer, or anyone else along those lines. Recovery scams are simply advance-fee scams that are specifically targeted at scam victims. When a victim pays a recovery scammer, the scammer will keep stringing them along while asking for increasingly absurd fees/expenses/deposits/insurance/whatever until the victim stops paying. If you have been scammed in the past, make sure you are aware of recovery scams so that you are not scammed a second time. If you are currently engaging with a recovery scammer, you should block them and be very wary of random contact for some time. It's normal for posters on r/scams to be contacted by recovery scammers after posting, and they often ask you to delete your post so that you both cannot receive legitimate advice, and cannot be targeted by other recovery scammers. Remember: Never take advice in private. If someone reaches you in private after posting your scam story, it is because a scammer will always try to hide from the oversight of our community members. A legitimate community member will offer advice in the open, for everyone to see. Anyone suggesting you should reach out to a hacker is scamming you.

source: reddit

-----

Example account shown running this scam: cyberhelp911 (there's probably other recovery scammers out there, this is just the most obvious and out there one that I saw)

Reason this account is a scam:

I really don't need to explain it... Just look at these pictures:

-----

Important things to always remember:

If you ever get an alert that there's issues going on with your account, saying that you were locked out, hacked, or you have money/photos/crypto missing, ect. The first thing you should do is contact support through the official website that you signed up on and nothing else.

Do not click on any links you may receive via text message telling you that there has been an issue with your account and that you need to 'click/go here' to fix it. (especially if it looks suspicious like a bit.ly or short url)

Do not click on any links in a e-mail that are telling you that there's been an issue with you an account and to 'go here' to fix it. (unless you are 150% sure that it is from the official website.)

Do not share your one time pass codes with anyone no matter who they are. Even your bank will never ask you for this. (If someone calls and they do, they are a scammer. Hang up and call your bank immediately.)

Do not seek help from strangers claiming to be able to fix your issues for free or 'for a small fee. Anyone promising they can fix your issue 'no problem' is lying to you. Do not give them your account information, your irl information, passwords, ect. They are scammers. (why would you do this anyway? They're strangers. Have common sense!)

-----

Final thoughts:

Only trust the help desks on the websites you sign up on to help you fix your issue. If you were contacted by someone and they ended up hacking/scamming you, make sure you take screenshots. Document everything. Any evidence is good evidence to help you prove you are who you are to get your account back.

Don't trust strangers on the internet to 'magically' fix your problems just because they claim they can do it. You wouldn't let your uncle who boasts 'he's worked on a car or two in his time' (and by that he means changed a tire) tear out your engine and replace the heating system.

You'd take your car to the mechanic. To the people you trust.

Your accounts should be no different. :)

Other helpful guides on spotting scams. (by @kyra45)

Current list of documented scammers: Part 1 and Part 2

-----

Disclaimer: This post is only meant to serve as documentation and reference material so that others know: why this person is a scammer, and to provide more information about the scam they are running. I do not, in any way, endorse harassment or mass reporting these users. Only report posts related to asks, comments, or messages if you GET them or ones like them. Thank you.

[celticcrossanon]

Princess Consort

Because I am tired and crabby and I see the 'Charles never said that' gaslighting is going around, here is a bonus post for those that are interested. These are some of the times that King Charles told the public that Camilla would be Princess Consort, from their wedding in 2005 to the last announcement in 2020:

1. 2005 - Press announcement from Clarence House, the office of Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales

Announcement of the marriage of HRH The Prince of Wales and Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles

Published on 10th February 2005

It is with great pleasure that the marriage of HRH The Prince of Wales and Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles is announced. It will take place on Saturday 9th April 2005.

The Prince of Wales has said: “Mrs Parker Bowles and I are absolutely delighted. It will be a very special day for us and our families.”

Princes William and Harry released a joint statement: "We are both very happy for our father and Camilla, and we wish them all the luck in the future."

Mrs Parker Bowles will use the title HRH The Duchess of Cornwall after marriage. It is intended that Mrs Parker Bowles should use the title HRH The Princess Consort when The Prince of Wales accedes to The Throne. The wedding will be a largely private occasion for family and friends. It will comprise a civil ceremony at the Guildhall in Windsor and will be followed by a service of prayer and dedication in St George’s Chapel over which the Archbishop of Canterbury will preside.

link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140624012434/http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/media/press-releases/announcement-of-the-marriage-of-hrh-the-prince-of-wales-and-mrs-camilla-parker

2. From the old British Monarchy website, archived in 2015:

The Prince of Wales married Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles on 9 April 2005 at a civil ceremony at the Guildhall in Windsor, followed by a service of prayer and dedication in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

After the wedding, Mrs Parker Bowles became known as HRH The Duchess of Cornwall. When The Prince of Wales accedes to the throne, she will be known as HRH The Princess Consort.

link https://web.archive.org/web/20150307053208/http://www.royal.gov.uk/ThecurrentRoyalFamily/ThePrinceofWales/ThePrinceofWales.aspx

3. Confirmation that Camilla will be Princess Consort from Clarence House in March 2020

"The intention is for the duchess to be known as princess consort when the prince accedes to the throne," a spokesperson for the royal couple told The Times. “This was announced at the time of the marriage and there has been absolutely no change at all.”

links https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a24594447/when-prince-charles-becomes-king-camilla-queen-consort/

and then we have the alleged harassment of the dying queen by her son, allegedly daily for over six months, until she issued an announcement saying that Camilla will be called Queen Consort and not Princess Consort.

Add in the statement by a reporter that Camilla told her (the reporter) that she would be Queen and not Princess years before the Late Queen died, and it looks like Prince Charles and his wife were lying to the general public for years about this.

Edited to fix typos

[1americanconservative]

John Albillar

poSentsrdou106f2alblty98cchFmcf1094hu8 ai868hh318m6r21acrfe7  · 

A lawyer, Tom Renz, who actually read Trump's DOGE Executive Order and, expecting some illegal power grab, found it to be airtight. Turns out Trump and Musk didn't create anything. Obama did.

Obama created United States Digital Service (USDS) in 2014. It was meant as a bureaucratic patch job to fix the Obamacare website meltdown.

Fast forward to 2025. Trump rebrands it DOGE (United States DOGE Service). Keeps the acronym, keeps the funding, but gives it a whole new mission: Find the Receipts

Legally untouchable because it was already fully funded and operational. Trump invokes 5 USC 3161, which allows him to create temporary hiring authorities. DOGE teams get embedded inside every single federal agency. Each team consists of a lawyer, HR rep, a zoomer nerd, and an investigator. They report to DOGE, not the agency they're embedded in.

But wait, there's more! Trump invokes 44 USC Chapter 35, which governs federal IT and cybersecurity oversight. Since USDS was originally an IT oversight body, DOGE now has full access to all federal data systems. Yes, that’s right. All of them.

His executive order is written to block legal challenges. Includes language that overrides conflicting executive orders. Orders every agency to comply. Refusal means they violate presidential authority.

Congress can't defund it because it's not a new program, just a repurposed one. DOJ can't sue for overreach because Trump used existing laws exactly as written. Democrats trying to file legal challenges run into standing issues because DOGE operates within existing frameworks.

Obama literally built the perfect Administrative (read: Deep State) IT backdoor.

Trump and Musk just hacked the system and took the admin controls. Musk now has legal oversight of every major agency's internal systems. The Administrative State can't stop it without rewriting multiple federal laws.

They legally outplayed the system and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Obama created DOGE

[0viraptoraskblog]

so for the sake of a fic im writing (or trying to, at least) i have Un Question:

what do you think the logistics are like behind fox's staff? like how would he scout people out first of all, and second of all keep them from just going to the police? i'm sure that he tries to keep the team as small as possible but also there's a lot of roles to be filled. surely a lot of cross training, but that gets dicey when you get into the fact that he needs to have Somebody with medical knowledge. also, particularly curious about how he supposedly managed to get mc in with an eye specialist. do you think he was even telling the truth about that? because basic field medic training is one thing but i struggle to imagine him having an opthamologist on hand.

thank you sm in advance for answering!! -🎀🐭

Well, a lot of it comes through the dark web.

Fox’s streaming platform, gore forums, and online sales platforms are all very illegal. He definitely used secret browsers and protections to run his business away from the eyes of ‘normal’ people. Not just anyone can access those sites. I think he interacts with a lot of people on such forums, both to build business and get a better knowledge of his current audience. If he’s known a certain user for a long time, and they have an eagerness to help out (hasn’t everyone thought of working with their favorite streamer once or twice?) he might reach out and offer them a job. Now remember, he’s very good with this secret tech— and he’d scrape the internet, both regular and dark, to give them a thorough background check first.

However, think of this; Fox has a huge audience. Strade had one back then, too. There’s a lot of people in the market for this dark kind of work. I’m sure some of those forums or secret websites link Ren to potential hires. He may have scouted for a specific surgeon who offers their services there— they do professional work illegally, but get paid twice the price of a normal hospital. I assume that’s where Ren got the eye specialist. (He’s also a big name around that side of the internet, so I’m sure any doctor who knows him wouldn’t hesitate to take his business.) I also doubt he was lying— if he didn’t want it fixed properly, he wouldn’t have bothered to have it fixed at all.

I believe he has trauma medics, typical surgeons, and maybe a pharmacist that work for him permanently, but any other specialist is a short term hire. Like you said, his team needs to be closely knit to function without *issues*, so he may only have one of each of those. It can’t be too small either, so he can maintain power and cooperation. There’s a balance.

That’s just my headcanon :)

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review VIII (federal 2025): David Pocock

Running where: ACT for the Senate

Prior reviews: federal 2022

What I said before: “Normally, individuals running on a ‘don’t ya know me and what I stand for?’ platform tack on something so that they are the Jacqui Lambie Network or the Rex Patrick Team or Katter’s Australian Party. David Pocock, however, has had an inspired moment and simply registered his party’s name as his personal name. This isn’t the David Pocock Group, Network, or Team. This is David Pocock.” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: Pocock has been a pretty decent Senator. He had a shaky first few months as he learnt how it all works, but once he figured out whose advice to take, whose to ignore, and what were the signs of a self-interested chancer in the setting of parliamentary lobbying, he got to work in a left-leaning way on issues affecting Canberrans and the nation alike. And, given that his victory at the 2022 election denied the Liberals a seat, his presence is all the more welcome—our parliament is better for Pocock ousting Zed Seselja.

Word on the street is that Pocock has done so well to cement his position in Canberra that he might even outpoll Labor. I will believe that when I see it, but in the contest with the Liberals for his seat, he’s the favourite to retain it. I have seen some speculation that Labor’s vote could drop low enough that Pocock scoops the left-leaning vote while the Liberals do enough to win the second seat ahead of Labor, but I don’t see this as likely. The fact that under Dutton the Liberals have taken aim at the public service and work-from-home policies makes me suspect they might register their worst ever result in Canberra.

Pocock’s website touts his “Wins”, including his ongoing goals. I like he opens with stats that he has given 617 parliamentary speeches, attended 167 ministerial meetings, considered 349 items of legislation, and negotiated 221 amendments. Canberrans, of all people, are most likely to appreciate this kind of info. He then sets out his main issues, and the left-leaning voter will find a lot to like in what he promotes that he is “still fighting for”. Not much leaps out at me as unappealing; he supports 4-year fixed-term parliaments, and while I think parliament should have fixed terms, I have seen no evidence that 4-year terms result in better governance than 3-year terms (and given Australia’s lengthy experience with both at state level, this evidence should be easy to produce if it exists). I prefer not to make politicians less accountable to electors. But this doesn’t seem to be something for which Pocock is fighting especially hard. His leading goal for political reform is to have the ACT’s Senate representation expanded from two to four Senators, which I agree is long overdue.

Pocock has been out the gates campaigning effectively for re-election and he has been busy releasing policies. Alongside climate action, for which he is well known, and action on cost-of-living issues, this year he has a strong focus on health, including more investment in the ACT’s healthcare system, better access to bulk billing GPs, and subsidies for longer appointments so that people with complex conditions don’t have to pay so much. I really like that he is pushing to overturn the ban on gay men in monogamous relationships from donating blood. It is an outdated policy that is no longer necessary for safety and repeal would bring Australia into line with other comparable countries and improve our blood supply.

On the housing front, he emphasises the need for much more investment in public and social housing, which should please many left-wing voters, and I’m happy to read that “the Territory must do more to relax zoning and other rules that restrict permissibility of ‘missing middle’ townhouse and medium-rise apartment buildings. More medium-density housing must be allowed … [and] The ACT Government has to find ways to speed up the development assessment process.” Build! Additionally, Pocock promotes “reform” of negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. This would be welcome but other parties have stronger positions. I suspect he is right, though, that to make such reforms palatable—especially as this is such a hot-button issue among Australia’s chattering classes—provisions for existing investments will need to be grandfathered in to any reforms.

All in all, I think Pocock is a very good option for left-wing voters in the ACT, and I would unhesitatingly rank him above Labor. I would possibly (probably?) put him above the Greens too. I’m not an ACT voter though, so I don’t have to decide that one for myself.

Recommendation: Give David Pocock a good preference.

Website: https://www.davidpocock.com.au/

[paradoxcase]

How to use search engines effectively in the year of our lord 2025

So, we all know Google sucks now. There are some other alternative search engines, but honestly, switching search engines isn't going to fix a lot of the fundamental issues we're seeing with search engines nowadays. But yesterday, while responding to someone on reddit who was making the argument of "Google sucks now, so really, how much worse is it to just ask ChatGPT" I realized that there is actually a formula for using search engines that I have that continues to work perfectly for most things despite the fact that Google sucks now, so I thought I would share.

First of all, to remove all of the AI bullshit from Google, you can use udm14.com instead, or install the udm=14 browser extension. The method I outline here may or may not work with search engines other than Google, I haven't looked into them deeply enough. udm14.com should be essentially just Google, but without AI.

Then, we have to go back to the beginning and understand what a search engine actually is, and what it isn't. I spent three years of my career working in the guts of a search engine (not Google, or any other web-based search engine), so I should hope I would know what they are:

A search engine is a tool to locate documents.

Google in particular has done a lot to obscure what a search engine actually is by adding a lot of "cool" "features" to their search engine which are not actually within the scope of search engine capabilities. When you search for a question and Google displays a bolded answer that it found on a web page? Not search engine provenance. When it displays its "AI Summary"? Not search engine provenance. When it advertises things to you? Not search engine provenance. When it comes up with questions that "other people asked"? Not search engine provenance. The core competency of a search engine is to find documents (in this case, web pages) from a large collection of documents (the internet) based on their relevance to a query you have typed. Just like people are misusing ChatGPT to do stuff it was not designed for and that it is not good at, using a search engine as if it is a question answering service that can deliver the answer to a question you asked is using the search engine to do something it was not designed for and is not good at.

The search engine is not an all-in-one tool any more than ChatGPT is an all-in-one tool. Research is a multi-step process that involves a search engine, but the search engine cannot do everything for you. Here is the process:

Learn how to identify reliable sources of information. Learn what sites tend to have reliable information about the topic you're looking up. Wikipedia is a good fallback that may give you links to other reliable sources. You can also ask people who know more about your topic for recommendations of good sites. There are also sites that rank the reliability and bias of other popular sites. The search engine's ability to find relevant documents is not super useful when the internet is full of untrustworthy bullshit and is becoming more so as time goes on due to AI-generated content. Just because a search engine returns a link does not mean it is reliable.

Use a search engine to specifically search just the websites you know are reliable for your topic. Google has some documentation about how to do this on their search engine here. There should be a way to do this on any other half-decent search engine, as well, but I don't have the details of how to do it. Now you have limited your scope from "anything and everything produced by everyone who has ever created a Wordpress account plus whoever paid Google to have their site appear in every single search" to a collection of documents that you can trust.

Read the sources that you get back from the search engine. No, seriously. Read them. Don't read Google's "AI Summary". Read the actual sources. Don't read the bolded answer Google put at the top of the results list. Read the sources. Don't ask another AI to summarize the sources for you. Read the sources. Don't just read the headline or title and assume you now know everything that is in the body of the article. READ THE SOURCES. There is no shortcut for this, you have to read.

There was a time when you could get away with being lax about this and just do general searches, but that was because there was an actual limit on the amount of wrong information that mere humans could generate per unit time, and also because Google did legitimately use to be more concerned with promoting reliable sources than with promoting whoever paid them the most money to do so. But that time is over.

Basically, if you wouldn't just type your question into ChatGPT and hope for the best, don't just type your question into Google and hope for the best, either.

[ms-demeanor]

I appreciate your calm-the-fuck-down post a lot, ngl - from following you, I've seen you have a pretty good handle on understanding what ToS does and doesn't say, and are good at explaining the difference - and I was hoping you could give some insight on whether or not the actually clicking the 'I agree to terms of service' button (note: multi-step process) required to turn off the New! flag makes a difference in the level of data collected - I would expect at the very least it would act as a gateway for whether or not user data is shared with the third party integration, but legalese isn't my field of study.

Agreeing to the ToS to get the little notification thing to turn off would allow tumblr live to share the data that it collects with 3rd party apps and would allow tumblr live to collect location data from your device whether or not you are actively using the app; whether you want to do this is up to you. I do generally recommend having location tracking shut off at a device level, which makes this data collection pretty useless, but I recognize that most people don't have location tracking turned off on their phones.

*HOWEVER*

People are talking about doing this to turn off the New! flag (which IS very annoying) but the most recent post from @changes makes it clear that that is an ongoing bug they are working on; Tumblr has been pretty decent recently about following up on the info they post about on the changes blog and I see no reason to believe that they won't get that bug fixed pretty quickly.

Rather than agree to the ToS I would suggest waiting a few days because I very much doubt that will stick around for long.

And this is not directed at you but I want to use this ask to point to another recent example of tumblr conspiracism: people are seeing the "new" flag as tumblr attempting to force users to agree to the live ToS even as they have offered a longer snooze period and saying that one negates the other - this is being interpreted as malice and a dark pattern and user hostile design.

And I just want to remind people that some time between eight months and a year and a half ago the notifications changed and it was briefly impossible to clear the new flag on the notification button - this is an issue that we've seen tumblr have before with "new" flags after they changed a feature. It's something that people yelled about and sent around guides for blocking the element. It's something that was addressed quickly and was done unintentionally.

I really wish people would stop attributing to malice the bullshit that happens at tumblr that is clearly the result of this website being hilariously broken and held together with hope and chewing gum.

There are ways in which this site is broken that does genuine harm and I'm willing to be cautiously optimistic that the new staff crew is taking steps to fix it (this is about blocked tags; I've been following what various staff members say about this and I have seen small positive steps, staff does seem to be making an effort to unfuck the tags and I can respect that while still being frustrated that it's taking so long). It isn't *good* that the site is held together with chewing gum and hope but it does seem like staff is at least trying to add some popsicle sticks and duct tape to that mix.

The new flag is annoying and I hope they get it fixed quickly and I believe they actually will get it fixed quickly; if you're really bothered by it there's not much harm in accepting the live ToS because the data collected by tumblr live is still pretty minimal compared to most other social media apps, but from a paranoid "fuck all this bullshit" perspective accepting the Live TOS doesn't do much harm at all if you have location data off on your devices (which I think everyone should) and use adblockers (which I think everyone should).

[themetalvirus]

so... i've owned two fountain pen revolution himalaya v2s for a while now, and i have some thoughts.

TLDR: fpr is a small business and you shouldn't avoid buying from them, but the himalaya v2 is not worth your time unless you're an enthusiast who has access to a lot of hobby supplies.

if you want an essay on why that's my thought, keep on reading bestie

fountain pen revolution is a remarkably small company making their own proprietary nibs and pen bodies, which is already incredible. their ultraflex nibs are a pretty popular modern flex nib choice in the fountain pen community. another thing i see touted a lot and agree with is that they have fantastic customer service.

hang on... why have so many people had experiences with going to customer service?

well, to put it bluntly, their pens do not work out of the box and they don't tell you this anywhere on their website. for the lucky few, they have received their pen and been able to fill and write with it without issue. for the rest of us, their pens are nothing but issues when they first arrive.

if there isn't some kind of manufacturing error (which is common, and they are always quick to replace these), there's an issue that you have to fix yourself. if your pen is drooling ink, you need to grease the threads of the converter with silicone grease, and if you don't have any then fuck you. if that doesn't work, you need to heat set the nib, which involves dunking the pen in near-boiling water, but watch out, it can severely discolor ebonite pen bodies and may not even work the first few times you do it! marvelous!

their proprietary converters also love to drop their stems. as in, the physical plunger becomes dislodged from its designated socket in the construction and the pen refuses to fill, so you have to shove it back where it belongs with a paperclip or something. this happens almost every time i try to fill it. fun!

when you fill the pen, you may think you did something wrong, because the full converter looks like... this.

there's a whole lot of ink in the grip section, but you can't see that. all you can see is the giant gap of dead air in the converter, which is discouraging. no other converter or piston fill pen i have does this, but this is considered normal for fpr converters. this feels like a nitpick, but all of these little weird experiences add up over time to make these pens feel like they were made by aliens.

everything in these pens is made by fpr themselves, which is really cool! their ebonite (not plastic, perfect for the essentially REQUIRED heatsetting step) feeds are very chunky and can handle feeding any ink-hungry nibs (like the ultraflex, for example) just fine.

their nibs are... fine? i have several of their nibs, and their standard grind lineup (xtra fine to bold) is quite uninteresting. i decided on the two-tone architect nib for my pink himalaya. in short: architect grinds give you thin up and down strokes, thick side to side strokes. great for arabic calligraphy! or drawing, which is what i use these for.

the ultraflex nib is... a can of worms. i didn't prepare any photos for discussion of this which i'm kicking myself about. flex nibs let you put down thicker lines the more you press down, which is very valuable for calligraphy and is a desirable trait for FPs. the more flex the better. the ultraflex is VERY flexy, but uses a lot of ink very quickly, is difficult to heat set properly, is prone to leaking, and is picky with how you use it lest it stop working. it's a very specific nib with a lot of downsides, and those downsides just make it more troublesome than it's worth for me.

the pen i have the ultraflex nib in hasn't been inked in a few months. let me show you some pictures nonetheless.

do you see those pink, yellow, or oddly dark patches in what is supposed to be pearly white sections of the finish? that's staining. the taj mahal finish is VERY prone to staining and it gets ugly quickly. these stains do not come out with washing.

the grip section on these pens is STINKY. if you've ever owned a pen made of "plant-based" plastic or resin, you know the exact stench i'm talking about. i have a pretty bad sense of smell, but the smell is even a bit disruptive to me. i can't imagine how it would be for someone with a sensitive nose. it smells like half-rotten compost, and will make your fingers smell much the same. again, the smell isn't a dealbreaker for me, but it's just another one of those details that makes the whole thing weird.

here's some more pictures of the pen body:

the body itself is actually perfectly nice! it has a nice middling weight which is balanced nicely throughout the pen even when posted. this is actually one of the pens i feel most comfortable writing with while the cap is posted - it's secure up there and doesn't add extra weight!

there are, of course, things to like about this pen. FPR's pens are very customization friendly. just yank out the nib and feed, pop a new combo in there, heat set it, done! they're super fun to tinker with and are a great excuse to break out all your fancy fp hobby supplies, lol. you know how some people love having project cars? this is a bit of a project pen. fun to use, and when it inevitably has some kind of problem you get to tinker with it.

FPR pens are first and foremost FOR. HOBBYISTS. these aren't pens that are beginner or even intermediate friendly, and that's their biggest drawback. they feel like they're built for tinkering rather than writing, and the quirks of a fully built in-house pen add up to create something that is, on the whole, odd.

again, FPR is a small business. my only experiences with them have been with these pens and the free muft they package in (which you should opt out of if you purchase from them, as like all things from fpr, they have poor quality control), so their other pens may be far more reliable.

the guy who does customer service is nothing but friendly and helpful. i just wish it wasn't practically a requirement to get a pen that you can write with.

all of this ends with me not inking these pens for fear they will leak and i'll have to do some kind of annoying maintenance on them i didn't plan on doing. they take up room on my pen desk, uninked and a little smelly, and they don't do much for me. they fill a niche, but i'm not sure if i am their niche.

[gracehosborn]

I hate to be the bearer of frustrating news, but in case some of you who frequent Founders Online (like I do) and have noticed an extreme spike of 503 “Service Temporarily Unavailable” errors, making access to the site impossible for periods of time, the team posted the explanation below:

Founders Online performance issues

19 May 2025: Founders Online is experiencing periodic degraded performance owing to extreme spikes in traffic caused by excessive website crawling, associated with content scooping from AI platforms and other indexers. We are working on a viable fix within the constraints of our server resources.

This is very unfortunate and very disgusting. I’m glad that they are trying to fix the issue, but it breaks my heart that they even have to put in the effort. From personal experience working as a student technician in my university’s Preservation Department, where my primary task is to digitize all sorts of old materials—books, newspapers, photographs, etc, and collaborate on how those items should be handled and scanned so that their digital copies can be presented and made accessible in the right ways, it takes A LOT of work just to digitize one item. Almost all of the documents you see on Founders Online are digital copies of the book pages from where these transcriptions originated—series’ of the founders papers that were printed in the last 70-80 years by university presses. Books that, when Founders was launched 15 years ago, were all between a few years and many decades old, and difficult for the general public to access. Of course, I don’t know the Founders team’s exact process for making the archive when they first started, nor do I claim to be the preservation expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a big hunch that it took many hundreds of hours, and likely continues to do so for the remaining volumes they intend to add to the site, to make Founders Online as it appears and maintain its usually fast performance.

AI in general frustrates me, but to see that this extremely valuable archive has now gotten caught in the scooping net makes me equally sad and angry. If you want to gather documents from the site, but will later be offline, you have the ability through the site to download PDF files of individual documents and print them. Most of the material is also in the public domain as well (not all, however—any annotations to a document are copyright of the institution which originally published those physical volumes I mentioned). AI scooping this archive for information to feed to language learning models is a waste of time, energy, and money, and is a violation of copyright law. At the risk of causing performance issues and affecting the servers that make Founders possible, this activity is potentially detrimental to historic preservation and access to historical knowledge. Those hundreds of hours the teams behind the site have worked also come into play: this site is their baby, their hard work, and it’s being stolen. And as a result, everyone’s ability to easily use the site without issue is being affected.

I am extremely fortunate to be in a position where I have been able to acquire a personal backup system for what I primarily use Founders for (my volumes of The Papers of Alexander Hamilton), and more so in that through my university, I have access to the rest of the physical series that make up the archive. So this current issue with the site being slow on performance and frequently down does not inconvenience me much. But this is a privilege. Founders Online was created to get around that privilege and allow for everyone (with an Internet connection) to access these important historical documents. I cannot hammer down to you just how important and valuable that is. Founders Online is an invaluable resource that deserves to be maintained and protected. I’m thankful that the team behind it are working diligently to do just that, but they should never have had to combat AI stealing their hard work and affecting the usability of the site in the first place.

[plumberswoodlandstx]

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[thenightfolknetwork]

I’ve been with my fiancé for over 8 years now. We’ve been friends for even longer and just last summer we had been planning our wedding ceremony. Now, his family hadn’t been the best supportively, not when he came out as gay, and especially not when he, a Sapio, started dating me, a giant. They then effectively disowned him after we announced our engagement. I think they might have had some weird hope he’d ’change his mind’ or that it was a ‘phase’. This was about 3 years ago now, and I can’t speak for my partner, but he admitted though it hurt, he was relieved to be away from them after all the abuse.

Anyway, the reason for this letter is about 7 months ago we had gotten word that his family had been in a serious accident and that his parents, sister and her husband had passed away and he was listed as next-of-kin and subsequently guardian for his 4 year old nephew.

Now, we never really talked about kids beyond some vague idea. But my partner wasn’t going to turn away the kid, nor did I expect him to. So, after the funeral service and sorting with social services, we brought his nephew home.

It has been an adjustment for all of us, getting used to having a kid around and him being in a new environment that’s more geared for my size honestly. and we’ve been trying to find a good child psychologist for him. but the main problem is… well, he’s afraid of me.

I can’t really blame him for that, after everything he went through, but it still hurts sometimes when he flinches when I enter a room or speak to him. Or how he looks ready to cry when I open my mouth. Even trying to hide when he sees me just reading a book. I’ve grown up in a mixed community, but the way the kid looks at me, for the first time in a very long time, I feel like a monster.

My partner has told me once when we were in bed that his ‘family’ had been filling the kid���s head with anti-nightfolk ideologies and even some rather… well, blood-libel comments. I think he was trying to comfort me as he noticed the way the kid had been a lot more skittish with me than with him. He has been trying to explain that a lot of the stuff his folks talked about was lies and really bad stuff, but it’s hard unlearning these sort of things. I had suggested we postpone the wedding, at least till things settle.

I have been trying to seem less ‘intimidating’, not smiling with my fangs and trying to look smaller than I really am. But I’m worried he might never not be afraid of me. And I never told my partner, but I’m afraid that he will be forced to pick between me and the kid, and I don’t want him to do that as I know either option will hurt him.

So I’m asking. Is there anything I can do to try and help seem less… monstrous to my nephew?

I'm afraid there are no quick fixes here, reader. Your nephew has been exposed to some seriously toxic ideologies from a very early age. That isn't the sort of thing you can fix over night.

I would caution against trying too hard to diminish yourself or your creaturely traits as part of this process. You want your nephew to be comfortable with you, not with a nervous caricature of yourself.

Instead, I encourage you to behave at home as normally as you can, being as friendly as he'll allow you to be and respecting his boundaries when he expresses them.

If you haven't already, talk to your partner about what your strategies are going to be to improve the situation. This is a long-term project that needs complete buy-in from both of you to succeed.

As much as possible, your partner should be exposing your nephew to the idea of difference, teaching him that it's OK to notice that other people are different than him, but that he still needs to treat them with kindness and respect.

There are so many more resources available today to help children learn about these matters, from books and films to websites dedicated to help you discuss these issues in an age-appropriate way.

Books like Paws, Claws and More, What's for Lunch? and My Daddy's A Mummy are a great way to start these conversations and to help introduce your nephew to these ideas in a way that is accessible for him. Talk to your local librarian for more recommendations.

The best way for him to learn to trust you is through spending time with you, drowning out the hateful ideas he's been taught through real, lived experience of being safe and happy in the company of people in the community. Make sure to set time aside for all three of you to spend time together, doing activities your nephew will enjoy.

Of course, his exposure to the creature community shouldn't start and end with you. If you can, consider getting him involved in mixed genus groups where he can meet liminal children his own age. It might be a bit of an adjustment for him, but it will a huge boon to him in the long run.

Finally, please consider seeking out some additional support for yourself during this process. This is a difficult, highly emotional situation, and you need to find people who you can talk to about it beyond your partner, whether that's to talk through possible solutions or just to vent occasionally.

Fortunately, reader, if there's one thing children are built for, it's learning. It will take time and emotional commitment, but with a little effort, I think you and your partner will be able to teach your nephew a kinder way of looking at the world.

[For more creaturely advice, check out Monstrous Agonies on your podcast platform of choice, or visit monstrousproductions.org for more info]